Leave A Comment

Comics A.M. | Archie, Graphicly partner to sell comics via Facebook

Digital| Archie Comics will begin selling its comics through its Facebook page, which connects readers with Graphicly. With almost 120,000 fans, the page does seem like fertile ground. “It’s really a major move toward connecting the potential reader to the product,” said Archie Co-CEO Jon Goldwater. “We make it easy and hopefully create a new, lasting part of our fan base.” [The Huffington Post]

Retailing | Matthew Price takes the temperature in the room at ComicsPRO and says that retailers want stability — they credit the consistent shipping schedule for the New 52 for part of that line’s success — and creativity. The overall mood seemed to be optimism, with Diamond Comic Distributors reporting that comics sales were up slightly in 2011. [NewsOK.com]

Conventions | The second annual Indian Comic Con kicks off today in New Delhi, debuting 20 new comics and graphic novels. Special guests include Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Gary Groth and Chris Oliveros. [The Wall Street Journal]

Creators | AiT/Planet Lar’s Larry Young discusses the Gary Friedrich lawsuit decision and AiT’s contract with creators, which lasts for five years and splits the proceeds three ways: ” … when Mimi and I started shopping around Astronauts in Trouble: Live From the Moon, there, at the outset, we’d receive offers to publish at inequitable percentages or for unusually long terms, and that informed our thinking when we started publishing with our own company. I’m sure our deal isn’t a secret in comics, since I often have potential creators quoting back to me the terms and thanking me for its fairness and King Solomon-like wisdom. We contract for five years, and the company gets a third, the writer gets a third, and the artist gets a third. We had some wiggling in the early years, so some stuff is WFH and some stuff is a few points here or there, but that’s what we’ve settled on. We do our job, and the writer does his job, and the artist does his job, and no one has room for complaint. Oh, sure, you might get some perturbed freelancers meowing in the corner and sharpening their incisors, but all of that gets self-selecting pretty quickly. I can morally defend ‘Split everything three ways between the three factions’ until the cows come home.” [Pink Raygun]

Creators | Malaysian cartoonist Zunar, whose criticism of his government has led to detention and book-banning, showed his works in London and displayed a bit of the attitude that gets him in trouble in his repressive homeland: “The Prime Minister (Najib Tun Razak) and his Cabinet ministers look very smart and intelligent, until they open their mouths. The moment they start to open their mouths, I open my sketch book.” [Free Malaysia Today]

Creators | Sam Humphries’ week continues as he discusses his upcoming work on the Ultimates for Marvel, as well as Our Love Is Real, Sacrifice and Higher Earth. [LA Weekly]

Creators | In a short video, Bryan and Mary Talbot talk about their collaboration on Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, which combines Mary’s memoir of growing up as the daughter of an emotionally distant Joyce scholar with the story of Joyce’s own daughter, Lucia, who had family troubles of her own. [The Forbidden Planet Blog Log]